Wailing Over "Draconian Cuts" with "No Tax Increases"

"Is that going to be — the wave of the future is to just cut deeply into education? It seems to be the thing that gets cut first now.""Your legislature has just sent you a budget that, I have to say, looks a lot more Republican than Democrat, in Massachusetts of all places. It limits bargaining rights of state workers. There are deep cuts in the programs for the poor, no tax increases....Are you going to sign this budget, Governor?""You had to make some Draconian cuts yourself. You have cut down on the number of fire stations, cut down on ambulance service. Do you feel good about that?"— Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, July 3, to Governors Scott Walker (R-WI) and Deval Patrick (D-MA) and the Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa. [Audio/video (1:16): Windows Media | MP3 audio]

"Problem" = GOP Fanatics Refusing to Raise Taxes

Anchor Brian Williams: "Does this work? What does it do for the people — the President himself talked about it today — the Americans who are hurting every day and hoping for a result to make their lives better?"White House correspondent Chuck Todd: "Well, look, the problem is this issue with the House Republicans. The leadership on the Senate Republicans and the House Republicans and the White House are pretty close to a deal, but what can they sell to the House Republican caucus, that new conservative, the Tea Party caucus? And, right now, they don't think they can sell anything that even remotely looks like a tax hike on anybody."— NBC Nightly News, June 29.

"You say you want offsetting tax cuts. That doesn't get you anywhere....If the White House, if Democrats are willing to cut trillions of dollars, which is certainly what you wanted in spending cuts, what is the Republican Party prepared to do in this negotiation that is hard?"— David Gregory to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on NBC's Today, July 7.

"Is the Republican Party willing to risk economic Armageddon in the name of religion, that is the religion of no taxes? Well, the GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the service of their anti-tax ideology....The Party's being driven by fanatics and they're determined to bounce America's savings bonds and have the United States begin to become like Greece."— MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball, July 5. [Audio/video (0:31): Windows Media | MP3 audio]

Blocking New Taxes Makes You a "Suicide Bomber"

Pat Buchanan: "They [conservatives] say, 'This is the wrong way to go. We don't believe in it. We've committed against it. We can't do it, Mr. President, you're asking us to break our word and do something we think is not going to work, and we're not going to do it, sir.'"...Co-host Mika Brzezinski: "So, I think the, what was the answer to my question that who the hostage taker is, Willie?"MSNBC's Willie Geist: "Sounds like Pat's boys. Pat's boys are holding the hostage."Newsweek editor-in-chief Tina Brown: "I think they're the suicide bombers in all of this."— MSNBC's Morning Joe, July 6.

Casting Michele Bachmann as Flaky Liar...

"A lot of your critics say you have been very fast and loose with the truth. You know, the PolitiFact, which is a Web site that won a Pulitzer, did an analysis of 23 statements that you made recently. Of these 23, only one they said was completely true. Seven they call 'pants on fire' kind of falsehoods. Four were 'barely true' and two were 'half-true.' How do you answer that criticism?"— Bob Schieffer to Michele Bachmann on CBS's Face the Nation, June 26.

"And the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site, PolitiFact, has said you have the worst record of making false statements of any of the leading contenders...."— Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos to Bachmann, June 28.

"PolitiFact.com, which is a Pulitzer Price-winning fact checking Web site, examined 26 statements that you made and they found only one to be fully true and 18 to be false. Several of them relating to your criticism of President Obama. Did you mean to make false statements intentionally, or were you just misspeaking?"— CNN's Kiran Chetry to Bachmann on American Morning, June 28.

...And an "Outside the Mainstream" Extremist

"The 55-year-old Minnesota Congresswoman, known for her firebrand conservative style...."— Correspondent Kelly O'Donnell talking about Michele Bachmann on the NBC Nightly News, June 27.

"She [Bachmann] has been described as being too far outside the mainstream to be president...."— Co-host Ann Curry to Tim Pawlenty on NBC's Today, June 27.

"So are you at all concerned that your socially conservative views that make you very popular in Iowa might not play as well down the road?"— Co-host Matt Lauer to Bachmann on NBC's Today, June 28. An MRC analysis of NBC's coverage from January 1 through July 31, 2007 found no "liberal" labels for any of that year's Democratic candidates.

Embracing the Constitution Makes You Pro-Slaveholder?

Clip of Michele Bachmann: "We have to recapture the Founders' vision of a constitutionally conservative government if we are to secure the promise for the future."Host Chris Matthews to Michael Steele: "What is this, Michael? The Protestant Reformation? That somehow we're going back to the purity of the original Christian church? We're going back to the original perfection of slaveholders and how perfect they were and government is the enemy. She speaks pure Tea Party lingo."— MSNBC's Hardball, June 27.

GOP Field: "Two Ken Dolls" + "Barbie With Fangs"

"When you get right down to it, he [Jon Huntsman] and Mitt Romney are the two Ken dolls in the Republican race. You got Michele Bachmann who is Barbie with fangs. [Laughter] I mean, it's — the field itself is just sort of a, like a caricature. There's no substance."— The Washington Post's Colbert King on Inside Washington, June 25.

Dazzled to See a Republican Who "Talks in Complete Sentences"

"There's a chance that Huntsman is going to be a sort of Republican version of Obama with all the positives and negatives that entails. So I think he's looking very much like the darling of the elites, media elites, also Wall Street, business. They love that he's shown up. He talks in complete sentences. He can give you an analysis of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party that will knock your socks off."— Thomson Reuters global editor Chrystia Freeland on ABC's This Week, June 26.

Founding Fathers: Sexist Guys Who "Enshrined Slavery"

"The reality is that the Framers — posed in paintings as though frozen on an American Olympus — they were not gods, they were guys: guys who didn't give women the vote, and let slavery stand for the time being, and who, by the way, were trying to create at the time a stronger central government (of course, not too strong), leaving to us a Constitution that we could fix as needed (sorry, make that amend), which we've now done 27 times."— ABC's John Donvan in a report for This Week, July 3.

"You know, no one has greater reverence for it [the Constitution] than I do — but it is worth remembering that in 1787, at this wonderful convocation that we celebrate, they also enshrined slavery....So, yes, the Constitution is a wonderful document, but infallible? It never was, and it still isn't."— CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Fareed Zakaria GPS, June 26.

If You Dissent on Climate Change, You're An Evil Liar

"Here is a fact on the table. Global warming, climate change — Rush Limbaugh says stuff that is just non — well, is just not true. I never use the word lie, but it's appropriate here....These people are evil in what they're doing. I'm not saying their souls are evil, but what they're doing is really, really wrong and it's not the President. It's this corrupt media on the right....They're making good salaries telling people what they know is not true. Rush Limbaugh is not a stupid person. Glenn Beck is not stupid. They're saying it on purpose."— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball, June 22. [Audio/video (1:01): Windows Media | MP3 audio]

ABC's White House Correspondent Admits Double Standard

"You know, anytime Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, you know, misplaces an adjective, we know about it and we cover it in the media. And, you know, this thing that the President did, and, obviously it was a mistake.... He was at the 10th Mountain at Fort Drum and he mistakenly said that he had given one [the Medal of Honor] to Sargent First Class Jared Monti, when actually Monti was the one of the two Medals of Honor he's given that was given posthumously. Monti died in Gowardesh, northeast Afghanistan in 2006. That's a big, uncomfortable mistake. And I don't think that that got the same kind of coverage as, you know, when Sarah Palin got Paul Revere's ride....There's no reason why the Medal of Honor mistake should have gotten less attention than Michele Bachmann."— ABC's Jake Tapper on The Dennis Miller Show, June 27. ABC News has yet to cover Obama's Medal of Honor blunder on one of their newscasts. [MP3 audio (1:09)]

Nobody Here But Us Non-Partisan, Non-Ideological Journalists

Host Piers Morgan: "What I've always liked about your style is it's — I wouldn't say confrontational, but you've never shied away from being opinionated. And people have always got this quaint idea about CNN, that it doesn't have opinions. What it doesn't have is partisanship, which is a very different thing from having an opinion...."ABC's Christiane Amanpour: "I am not an American. I don't vote. I don't have an ideological bias. I actually have a lot of both — I believe in a lot of liberal policies and a lot of conservative policies."— Exchange on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, June 22.

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